Within the art, personal communication service (PCS) is provided in paging zones. The PCS switching system identifies each registered wireless set as being in a particular paging zone. When the PCS system receives an incoming call for a particular wireless set, the PCS system requests that all base stations within the paging zone of the wireless set transmit paging messages requesting that the wireless set identify itself with one of the base stations. Normally, a PCS base station can handle a limited number of wireless sets such as two to twelve active wireless sets at any given time. Since by their very nature, wireless sets are mobile, large concentrations of wireless sets may be present in a particular paging zone or within a portion of the paging zone served by only a few base stations. When this occurs, the wireless sets cannot make outgoing calls nor receive incoming calls. In addition, in these situations, the user of the wireless set has no control over how the PCS switching system will treat an incoming call that cannot be connected to a wireless set because of the lack of call capacity on the base stations that are presently serving the wireless set.